by Penny Jordan
'Your mother?' Diana asked anxiously.
'Improving, thank God, although they're going to keep her in for a couple more days.' He pushed his fingers through his already disturbed hair, looking drained and vulnerable.
'I don't suppose there's any chance of a cup of coffee, is there? Mrs J won't be up yet, and that stuff at the hospital was vile.'
'Come on up. I've got a filter machine in the kitchen—but that's about all at the moment. I'm afraid I can't offer you anything to eat.'
'I'm not hungry.'
As he followed her up the narrow stairs she was intensely conscious of him physically. Half-way up, the baby suddenly kicked—hard—and she stopped abruptly, clutching her stomach with her hands.
From behind her, she heard Marcus call out harshly, 'Diana, for God's sake… what is it?'
He grabbed hold of her as though he was afraid she was going to pass out, swinging her round to face him.
'It's nothing… just the baby kicking.'
His eyes followed the line of her body to where her palm rested. Through the thin cotton of her skirt the impatient movement of the small limb was clearly discernible, and Diana heard him catch his breath, and then go so white that she thought he might faint.
'Can I…?' He swallowed. 'Can I feel?'
Such an intimate request momentarily threw her. She would have thought that as a farmer Marcus would be immune to the wonder of pregnancy and birth, but there was no mistaking the look of awed fascination in his eyes.
A tiny thrill of pleasure shot through her that he should want to reach out and touch his child, and, with an unconsciously Madonna-like smile, she took hold of his calloused hand and placed it flat against her stomach.
As though he or she knew what was required, the baby kicked vigorously again.
'The miracle of new life,' Marcus said hoarsely. His hand dropped away from her and he said abruptly. 'I thought my mother was going to die. I went through a hell of guilt while I waited for her to come round, and the worse thing of all was my fear that somehow she might will herself not to… that she might want to die.'
He looked up at her, and Diana saw the unashamed shimmer of tears in his eyes.
Without conscious thought she leaned forwards and took him in her arms, his head resting on her breast.
The fact that they were still standing awkwardly on the stairs was forgotten as their traditional roles were reversed, and she was the one who gave comfort and he the one who took it.
As she looked down at his bowed dark head she felt a surge of emotion so deep, so strong and sure, that it was almost as though new power and life was flowing into her body; and then Marcus moved, breaking their physical contact, and the moment was over.
They went up to her kitchen in silence. Marcus helped her to prepare the coffee, and as it started to drip through the filter she offered awkwardly, 'I think there's some hot water if you want a shower…'
It had occurred to her that when he got back to the farm he would have to go straight out to work, and that a shower might help to refresh him a little.
'I'd love one. If you're sure you don't mind?'
'Not at all… It's through my bedroom, the door's open, and there are clean dry towels in the cupboard. If you're quick the coffee should just about be ready when you are.'
He hadn't returned when the coffee was ready, so she poured it and waited… and waited… until, feeling thoroughly alarmed, she hurried up the second flight of stairs to her bedroom.
Marcus was lying sprawled full-length on her bed. He looked as though he had just sat down, and then been completely overcome by exhaustion.
Beads of moisture still clung to his skin, as though he had been in the act of drying himself, and as she looked closer Diana could see that in addition to the towel wrapped round his hips, another damp one lay beneath him.
He would be back for milking, he had told Mrs Jenkins, and it was almost four o'clock now. Indecisively, she stood there. It was clear that he needed his sleep and it was equally clear that he would be annoyed if she didn't wake him.
As she bent uncertainly towards him the decision was taken out of her hands. He opened his eyes and looked up into her face, bemusement turning to such blazing delight as his eyes met hers and registered the reality of her that it made her throat ache.
He reached out and touched her wrist tentatively, and then he smiled at her.
'So you are real; this time…'
'Marcus—the milking—you'll need…'
'There's only one thing I need right now, and that's you.' His voice was rough and low, and his fingers tightened round her wrist like a vice, to prevent her automatic backward step.
'I want you, Diana. I've dreamed about being with you like this so often. Please don't send me away.'
'Marcus…'
'No… No, don't say anything.'
He sat up and took her in his arms before she could stop him. The sheer physical pleasure of being so close to his warm male body silenced all her protests and weakly she found herself responding to the slow, erotic movement of his mouth on her own.
When she did finally manage to pull away her heart was thudding as heavily as his own.
'Marcus, the farm…'
'What farm?' he demanded huskily, his hold on her tightening, and she knew that she was lost.
Sexually, as well as emotionally, he seemed to spark off a need in her that refused to be denied. She knew that what she was doing was folly, but no matter how logical the arguments against making love with Marcus might be, she knew they were not strong enough to make her send him away.
He lifted her on to the bed beside him and looked into her eyes. His hand touched her stomach gently, caressing the swell of their growing child.
'Will he or she mind?'
The simplicity of the question, the fact that he cared enough about her to ask, filled her with an almost melancholic emotion. What a marvellous father he would have been; still would be to someone else's child… She reached up and touched his face, gasping as he buried his lips against her open palm, and pleasure stabbed wildly through her.
She ought to send him away. She ought… but he was lowering her towards the bed, and the sight and scent of him, the feel of his naked weight bearing her back against the mattress awakened such atavistic and pleasurable memories that she simply closed her mind to what she ought to be doing.
It didn't take him long to remove her clothes, but even so both of them were trembling when he eventually touched her skin.
She hadn't realised how deep an imprint he had made upon her senses until now. Her very flesh seemed to welcome him as though it had yearned for his touch.
He caressed every inch of her, exploring her changed shape, pressing tender kisses against the swollen curves of her breasts, until the tiny sound she half suppressed deep in her throat told him that she wanted more than tenderness from him.
Beneath her fingertips Diana felt the smooth mesh of his muscles and then their tension beneath her touch, and she was filled with a deep, feminine sense of power.
In her arms this man became as vulnerable as a child, just as she was vulnerable to him. She shivered, closing her mind to the thought, and shaking her head, when Marcus lifted his to murmur softly, 'Cold?'
'Hold me, Marcus. Just hold me,' she pleaded with him, wrapping her arms tightly around him.
She felt his response to her in the sudden hardening of his body. His mouth burned on hers, his tongue invading her moist sweetness with a thrusting rhythmic movement that echoed the pulsing hunger of his body.
He had wanted her for so long; had dreamed of holding her like this… when they were together this way it was almost possible to forget that she loved another man and that she carried his child.
The feelings Marcus aroused inside her were impossible to resist. His mouth moved to her throat and she shivered in convulsive pleasure. He kissed her breasts, taking her tender nipples deep into the fierce heat of his mouth, making her cry out as spasms of delight racked her
, and her nails raked feverishly along his back.
Their lovemaking had an intimacy it had not had before. This time they knew one another; and they had remembered more of each other than she would have expected.
She remembered the taste of his flesh and the pleasure of caressing it with her lips. She remembered how good it was to caress him and to feel his male response.
He had remembered how sensitive her nipples were, and how she had cried out in a mixture of denial and delight when his mouth had caressed the inside of her thigh.
He did it again now, less tentatively than last time, touching her so intimately and pleasurably that her body seemed to melt into a hot pool of delight. And all the time she could sense his own finely held control, his determination to give her pleasure before seeking any for himself, his care of her swollen body as though he feared to hurt either her or her child.
Such consideration touched her emotions in a way that nothing else ever had. She wanted to reach out and embrace him, to cradle him against her, and tell him that she had lied and that her child was his, but even in the fierce, tumultuous throes of their flesh coming together, when Marcus's self-control splintered and he made love to her with a need that verged on the obsessional, she still managed to retain just enough sanity to hold back the words.
Her body imploded in silent ecstasy as she felt his shattering climax within her, his harsh cry of male triumph smothered against her mouth as he took it in a final, searing kiss. He eased her gently on to her side, and she touched the damp warmth of his chest with her fingertip, tracing the dark line of hair.
'It's getting light properly now,' she warned him.
'We'll just sleep for half an hour, and then I'll go. We have to talk about what happened just now, Diana. You know that, don't you?'
She must have betrayed more to him than she had thought. It would be hard now to deny to him that she wanted him… that she needed him.
Her eyelids dragged down as though they were tied to heavy weights. Marcus pulled her close to the warmth of his body and she curled up against him. The baby kicked and Marcus frowned as he felt the tiny fluttering movement.
For a moment he had almost forgotten that she was carrying another man's child. A man she still claimed to love. He really ought to leave. He would be late for milking, not to mention the potential gossip he was likely to cause by parking outside her house at this time of the morning, but the temptation to remain with her was too strong.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Diana never knew quite what had woken her. She was only conscious of the change in the quality of the light filtering into the room. She looked towards the window and saw Marcus standing there.
He was fully dressed, and had obviously intended to leave without disturbing her. As she lay watching him she heard the church clock strike the hour. Seven— Marcus was going to be late for milking. She was just about to speak to him, when the sleep clouding her brain cleared and she became aware that his stance, even from behind, was clearly one of anger and disbelief.
A cold sensation of fear engulfed her as he turned round and she saw the photograph he was holding in his hand. On the window lay the letters from the solicitor, and it was obvious that he had been reading them.
'It was all a lie, wasn't it… wasn't it?' he demanded fiercely. 'There is no Leslie… no husband. You made him up. Why? Why, Diana? Why come here posing as a newly bereaved widow? What is it about you that makes you do such a thing?'
The shocked disgust in his eyes was like a knife being buried inside her. She had never imagined there could be pain like this, and it came to her in that moment that she loved him.
'Well? Are you going to tell me the truth?'
Suddenly, she felt bitterly angry. Her motives in acting the way she had had been for the protection of her child. He was the one who had been responsible for the growth of her deception. It had been because of him that she had been forced to lie and lie again.
'Why did you pretend you had a husband?'
And then as though in answer to his own question his eyes strayed to her body.
'My God.' His voice was hoarse with shock. 'If there was no husband then… My child, Diana,' he said thickly. 'That's my child!'
He reached her in three strides, practically hauling her out of the bed, his fingers digging painfully into her upper arms.
'You lied to me. That's my child you're carrying, isn't it… isn't it?'
'Yes.'
For what seemed like a long, long time there was silence between them. It stretched taut like wire, and it seemed to Diana's sensitive nerves that it stretched so tight that the very air around them was explosive with its tension.
'Right, I want to hear the whole story. The whole thing right from the beginning.'
'There isn't time now… tonight…' She was trying to buy time, trying to think what she should tell him.
'No, not tonight Diana, but now. If I leave it until tonight, what's to stop you running out on me? I want the truth. I think I have the right to demand it, don't you? My God!' he exploded bitterly. 'How could any woman do that to a man? Let him father her child and then keep it a secret. Why did you, why…?
'I didn't. At least it wasn't like that. I didn't deliberately set out to get pregnant, Marcus. Leslie…'
She saw him wince, and bit down hard on her bottom lip to stop her self-control from fracturing into a thousand irreparable shards as he said savagely, 'Dear Christ, all this time I've been jealous of a shadow… of a man who doesn't exist. You've been putting me through hell, do you know that? Have you any idea what it does to me to discover that Leslie is…'
'Not is,' she told him bleakly. 'Was… Leslie is dead… she was my closest friend. She died of leukaemia. She was ill for a long, long time… After her funeral I think I went a little bit crazy. That night…'
She saw his eyes darken as though he was remembering something and he said hoarsely, 'You were a virgin, weren't you? Christ, didn't you even stop to think about what you were doing? About the risks you were running? Not just of pregnancy, but to your health?'
'Did you?'
She watched as the dark colour ran up under his skin. 'I wanted you too damn much to think of anything else,' he told her roughly.
'And of course, it's different for a man.'
'Not if he values his health,' Marcus contradicted her, surprising her. 'I told you at the time that I didn't go in for casual sex, if you remember.'
'And of course, Patty wasn't available. How disappointing for you. And how very frustrating. No wonder…'
He shook her so hard that she was unable to complete her sentence. 'Don't you dare say that! I wasn't using you as a substitute for Patty. Good God, she's hardly more than a child.'
'Is that really how you see her? That wasn't the way she described your relationship to me,' she told him bitterly.
'Oh, Patty likes to exaggerate. She's very theatrical, but she and I have never been lovers, whatever she may have told you.' He made an exasperated sound deep in his throat. 'We're digressing. You still haven't told me why you lied to me about your pregnancy.'
'Isn't it obvious? I came here because I wanted a new start for myself and my child. I didn't want, and I still don't want, the stigma of illegitimacy hanging over him or her. I don't want to bring up my child in the anonymity of a large city. Leslie was a writer and she wrote a best seller, and she had made rather a lot of money. She willed it all to me.'
'I believe that a child deserves to have the love of both its parents,' Marcus told her bluntly.
'So do I, but not all children are fortunate enough to have that sort of family unit.'
'Ours can. I want you to marry me, Diana, just as soon as it can be arranged. In fact, I insist on it.'
'No.' She reacted instinctively against the panicky fear clawing through her. Talking about Leslie had reactivated all her old fears and dreads. She couldn't marry Marcus, she couldn't go through the trauma of losing someone she loved.
'Do you know
what you're doing?' Marcus challenged. 'You're denying our child its right to a normal, happy family life. And you're doing so by the most arbitrary means I've ever seen.'
'Most men in your position would be only too delighted to be absolved from their responsibilities,' Diana flared.
'Maybe, but I'm not most men.'
'We can't marry,' Diana flung at him. 'We can't marry simply because…'
'Between us we've started a new life. Can you think of any better reason?' he asked grimly. 'What are you going to tell our child when he or she asks why he doesn't have a father? Will you tell him the truth, Diana? That it's because you refused to marry me? Because if you don't I damn well will.'
'No… No… I won't let you come anywhere near my baby…'
She tore herself away from him and scrambled off the bed, sick with terror as she raced for the door.
He mustn't know how much she wanted to give in and agree to what he was saying. She loved him and she wanted to marry him; she wanted them to share their child, but she was also frightened by the enormity of the commitment she would be making. She couldn't forget how it had felt to watch Leslie slowly slip away from her; the anguish of loving someone and losing them.
As she reached the door she wrenched it open. She heard Marcus call out something to her, but she was in too much of a panic to listen. She had forgotten the boxes piled at the top of the stairs and she stumbled into them and lost her balance.
The knowledge that she was going to fall down the stairs hit her almost before it happened. Like a film played in slow motion she was conscious of her body falling; of Marcus crying out her name; of pain and confusion, and then darkness.
She recovered consciousness briefly in the ambulance. Marcus was sitting beside her, his face white with shock and guilt, but it wasn't his fault, it was hers. She wanted to reach out and tell him so but it hurt too much to talk. She saw him look at her and saw the anguish in his eyes.
Her hand touched her stomach and she shuddered suddenly. What if she lost her baby? She closed her eyes and prayed desperately, and then, like a child making a magic incantation against evil, she found herself promising that if only her baby was safe she would do whatever Marcus wanted. She would even marry him. The vow hung in her mind as she fell back into unconsciousness, but she had made it and she clung to it like a good luck charm, almost as hard as she clung to Marcus's hand.